470 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY 



science ought not to be exaggerated. Ordinarily the social 

 scientist cannot himself be an expert in natural science, nor 

 does he have to sit idly waiting for a perfect account of man 

 before he can begin to collect his own data, or develop his own 

 conceptual systems. At any given moment there may be psy- 

 chological information of which the social sciences do not yet 

 have use, and there may be sociological findings which psy- 

 chologists cannot yet explain. 



Are the social sciences a branch of 'psychology? 



Since this partial dependence of the social sciences upon 

 biology and psychology is so obvious, we might well inquire 

 whether the social sciences ought not to be regarded simply as 

 a branch of natural science, namely as one of the fields of 

 psychology. Comte long ago thought of sociology as the cul- 

 minating natural science, including physics, chemistry, and 

 biology as its elements. Today more and more the term " be- 

 havioral sciences " is becoming popular. 



Indeed psychologists in attempting to define their own field 

 commonly state that social psychology is an intermediate dis- 

 cipline connecting psychology and sociology. Klineberg says: 

 "Psychology has been defined as the scientific study of the 

 activities of the individual. Social psychology may be defined 

 as the scientific study of the activities of the individual as in- 

 fluenced by other individuals." ^ I am afraid, however, that 

 definitions of this type hardly satisfy the requirements of logic 

 or of a rigorous philosophy of science. 



" 0. Klineberg, Social Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 2nd ed. 1954) p. 3. 

 The difficulty is stated by Kimball Young and Linton Freeman, " The conception 

 of interaction has always been regarded as central to social psychology as well 

 as sociology. From birth on, the survival of the human being depends on the 

 intercession of another individual, normally his mother or mother-surrogate. As 

 he grows up, he lives in social interaction with other members of his family and 

 later with individuals in other primary associations; finally, he moves into the 

 world of specialized secondary and segmentalized groups. Thus from birth on he 

 is part and parcel of a series of interconnected, interactional units, the model of 

 which is the dyadic parent-child, child-child, or adult relationship '' (" Social Psy- 

 chology and Sociology," in Becker and Boskoff, op. cit., p. 550) . 



